Inelastic scattering and sticking of hydrogen molecules at adsorbed rare-gas overlayers

A method for treating strongly inelastic scattering of light atoms and molecules from rare-gas overlayers with close-coupling wave packets is proposed. The multiphonon distributions for the excitation of the rare-gas atoms, treated as Einstein oscillators, are calculated in one and two dimensions for a single excited oscillator as well as for in-phase excitation of the overlayer. Strong inelasticity and deviations from Poisson distributions are found especially for the scattering of H₂ from Ar, less from Kr or Xe. We also show that this method is able to handle the dynamics of sticking and trapping on these overlayers.